"Give me a lever long enough, a fulcrum strong enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth" - Archimedes
"When I bang my spoon, my plate goes flying into the air." - Isaac Allen

So we have discovered the principles of levers in my house. In fact we even know what a lever is, because dad has said on a number of occaisions "Your spoon is not a lever."

Dad did this, because Isaac's new dinnertime trick was to put the handle of his spoon under his plate, and then bang down on the end of the bowl of the spoon, and send his plate flying.

In a fabulous display of childhood innocence, he actually managed to spray peas all over the dining room, and then when he looked over his shoulder to see what had happened, forgot that he was holding an open cup of juice in the other hand, and poured it all over his own head.

What can you do?

So now we have rules in our house about spoons as levers.

Now, to those of you who either:
a) are familiar with Medieval siege engine technogogy, or
b) have been a little boy at some point,
you will know that a catapult, is just another form of a lever. Originally designed for hurling large heavy stones at fortress walls in order to knock them down, the catapult has a number of uses that I am anticipating (dreading) seeing applied at our house.

These include the spoon catapult, and it's much more powerful cousin, the 'serving spoon' catapult. The spatula catapult, and of course the ultimate weapon: the garden shovel catapult.

So far the main use of the spoon catapult has been to lift the plate so quickly it flips over. It is, however, only a matter of time before he realizes (or one of the little urchins at his Day Home shows him) that you can use it to fling small (say...pea sized) objects over a great distance.

After that come the accuracy trials, in terms of trying to hit: the wall, daddy (bad idea), mommy (shockingly bad idea), and the cat. After that come the distance trials, which involve just how far a frozen pea can travel with one bang of the spoon.

So, that's what it's like being a dad to a (almost) three year old.

Sam, btw, has taken up shouting as his new hobby. Call us some time when he's awake. There is absolutely no way you can miss it. He lies on his back, and kicks his legs and waves his arms, and ... well, he shouts. He's not angry, at least I don't think so. He's just testing out these wonderful new things called vocal chords.

And for the singers in the audience, he has discovered that he has head tones, chest tones, and the ability to slide back and forth between them. Often it sounds like an Air Raid Siren impersonator warming up for a big show. It's actually quite humorous, but forgive us if the abovementioned phone call is brief and distracted.

All is well, we'll talk soon.

Back in Business.
So it turns out that the LHJ is back in business. I guess Rich (thanks Rich!) updated his Blogger acct, so I'm good to go.
Which is good, because I had really missed these little updates.
I'm sure all of you know about Sam by now...likewise I'm sure all of you know he has Down Syndrome. Well, along with DS, often comes a whole host of medical problems, which gratefully Sam seems to have dodged.
The worst of these, is heart defects. Sam had an echocardiogram within days of being born, and it turned out almost totally normal, with a few relatively normal little holes, that should grow over normally - so said the pediatric cardiologist.
So today we go back for the follow up appt, to see if they actually did grow over.
Never in my life have I so badly wanted to be able to decipher the fuzzy black and white images on a diagnostic imaging machine.
I was trying desperately (and, I might add, failing) to not pepper the Diagnostic Imaging Tech with questions, but I did manage to find out that what she was looking at was ventricles, and what the colours meant was the direction blood was flowing - toward the ultrasound wand, or away.
This of course lead to - wait for it - full blooded bull moose panic. Are the ventricles operating correctly? Is blood going in the right direction? What's that funny gurgle looking motion? What what what?
In short, if I'd had my druthers, I'd have sounded like Isaac. So I shut my mouth, and just watched.
Now we have to wait...2-3 weeks to get the results back. I'm sure I'll be fine. I'll look kind of cute bald - because all of my hair will have fallen out by then. Grrr.
I'd like to say that normally I'm not such a worrier, but everybody who knows me would burst into sardonic laughter, and that would end that. So I'm going to worry.

In reality, Sam is fine. He has hit all his 5 month milestones a little early, and is a very happy laughing giggling baby - now that Noelle has moved to a totally gluten free diet while she's breastfeeding. But that's another story.

Meanwhile, we seem to have aquired a cat. Those of you who remember Chima and Toast, may recall me refering to them as the left and right hemisphere of Satan's brain.
The new cat is Livingston. And he's just Satan's berserk adolescent pituitary gland. It's scary. he spends alot of time running back and forth, and climbing things. Furniture, curtains, trailing houseplants (crash!), and of course, legs. Word to the wise, if you're coming over any time soon, wear pants, not shorts. Preferably pants you're not all that fond of.

BTW, Livingston was named after the fearless adventurer and explorer Dr. Livingston, who wandered off in search of the Nile Headwaters, and simply never came back. Our cat is just as adventurous, only without quite as much decorum as a Victorian Era Gentleman. In fact not quite as much decorum as a Chilean Soccer Hooligan. Sheesh.

Finally, I know you've all been on tenterhooks wondering what new wacky thing Isaac is doing. And frankly the list would take you the rest of the night to read. His new one for the last couple nights is...well, first I should explain.
1. Isaac is obsessed with ghosts. He pretends ghosts are everywhere, and often grabs a flashlight and goes hunting for them. This is often fueled by a "Backyardigans" episode featuring the characters as scary ghosts in a haunted house. It was on again this evening.

2. Isaac often gets simple words wrong, while mastering the complex ones. So the word he got wrong in relation to Ghosts, was "Boo." In fact, it came out "Moo!". So now, are they not only ghosts, they are ghost cows.

3. So what Isaac does when he doesn't want to go to bed...which recently has been every night, is he hollers until someone comes up, and does this:
"Mom, did you hear that?" (looking slyly to the right) "MOO!" (gasp) "It's a ghost cow and it's coming to get us. I'd better get him."
Needless to say we don't play along, but the house seems to have been overrun with ghost cows, and they are coming out almost every night.

However..(there's always a however), tonight the Ghost Cow routine fell flat on it's face, so he found a new attention getting solution. But noooooo, not the old "glass of water" routine. that's too simple. Instead, Isaac announced tonight that he had something stuck in his teeth that was bugging him.

Now let me explain. Isaac has his mother's teeth. This means that a. they're very small, and b. despite him being almost three, he still hasn't got all his molars yet. so his teeth have little gaps between them. In other words, there is no way for anything to get stuck, it would just fall out.

Nonetheless, I did my fatherly duty and poked around, and of course there was nothing. Nice try kid...get back to bed.

Finally, his new expression he has used a few times is "Dad, I extremely need that." That's right. Extremely. I don't know what he gets it.

Finally, on the topic of word confusion...Noelle made him a play rocketship out of a diaper Huggies box, and I push him around in it. One day, I announced we were going to mars to see Martians. He struggled with the whole Martian concept, and finally settled on us going to Mars to see Marshmellows. Made sense at the time.

Well, the other day, I announce that we're going to the moon to collect moon rocks. He climbs out of his space ship and says "Let's go find Moonmellows." So maybe he got it after all.

It's good to be back in the blogosphere.